As of Jan. 1, the new law will enable our volunteers to conduct search-and-rescue missions, such as finding lost hikers and missing planes, or transporting medical supplies to an accident site – without the threat of losing our employment.

This measure provides employment leave provisions (up to 10 days a year) for volunteer members of the California Wing of the Civil Air Patrol when performing authorized emergency operational missions. The protection applies only when we are called up for an emergency by the U.S. Air Force, the California Emergency Management Agency or any subdivision of the state with the authority to declare an emergency.

To perform search-and-rescue flights for several days and find out you’ve lost your job is devastating to a volunteer whose main purpose is to save lives. Until this bill was signed into law, we only had the job protection rights given to us by our employers. Fortunately, employers have generally been supportive of the Civil Air Patrol.

Lt. Col. MARK FLOYD Billie L. Le Clair Cadet Squadron 31 Upland

Be proactive

About a week after the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Flight 253, the Obama administration finally sat down and started to look at the information that was available and the process that was used, to exam that information which might have prevented the “alleged” bomber from getting on board the flight in the first place.

While this post-mortem was happening, the news media was supplying us with additional failures of security from Newark, N.J., on the East Coast, south to Miami and then out west to Portland.

Meanwhile, TSA rolled out additional security measures to include full body scans – all in an attempt to ease the public’s fears.

Yes, it is good that measures are being taken. But it is disturbing how quickly the terrorists were able to strike at America – twice in two months.

It is also disturbing how the public seems to accept the dim-witted mind-set this administration has toward this threat to our safety.

As we move forward into 2010, security measures will tighten up and then go lax – again.

Meanwhile, like a river that changes direction if an obstacle blocks its path, the terrorists are already reviewing our revised security measures – thanks again to our news media and politicians who can’t wait to broadcast to the world what they are – and devising new ways to get around them and to get at us.

Our intelligence community must do more than react after the fact and connect dots. They must find a way to be proactive and to block the new attempts before they reach our country.

Taking the politics out of intelligence gathering, replacing officials with people who understand the enemy and whenever possible letting our special ops teams loose to take the fight to them would be great first steps.